


A Bad Night (And A Better Morning)

by Iambic



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adoribull Holiday Exchange, Early Relationship, Emotional Incompetence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 08:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5660251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dorian realises he's taken advantage, and that he's not particularly competent at making up for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bad Night (And A Better Morning)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Barkour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/gifts).



> Happy Adoribull Gift Exchange to my dear beloved Anna! You wanted Dorian taking care of Bull, and what you got is more like There Was An Attempt, but hey. You might also got a sequel.

A long day, a bad night. Dorian had found himself outside the Bull’s door, which has ever had been left unlocked, and had opened it without much input from his thoughts. At the desk by the hearth sat the Bull, head resting on his left hand, quill dangling uselessly from his right. He’d looked up, and sighed.

_ Dorian _ …

_ Not – not that. Will you allow, that is, may I… _

A grey morning. Dorian wakes slowly to warmth to his front, cold to his back, and identifies the warmth eventually as the Bull, still slumbering beneath him. A pang, then. Last night he’d been an intruder, creeping into the Bull’s bed for some kind of comfort – and whenever had he begun to find comfort there? Dorian had woken just briefly as the Bull settled in beside him, just long enough to press closer until the Bull wrapped a hand around his back to hold him there. 

“I should go,” Dorian says, all but silently, a test of the words. His voice rasps in his throat.

The Bull stirs then, and Dorian stills. Warmth against his left shoulderblade, then, as the Bull wraps an arm around him once again. “Mmm. Morning.” In a slow movement the Bull drags his hand a short way up and down Dorian’s back, soothing until Dorian recognizes the nature of the act. He doesn’t stiffen, but his heart sets to pounding. The Bull must feel it, pressed together as they are.

It’s too much, after the frustration and despair of the night before. Sequestered from morning to evening in the forge with Dagna, delicately prodding at Calpernia’s crystal, and not a thing to show for it. Another snide letter from the Head Librarian of the Minrathian Circle refusing his requests in the most insulting means possible without directly condemning him. The perpetual distaste and distrust of a keep full of southerners who manage never to notice his commitment to the cause. A cold night, and a dragging sorrow, until there’d been nothing for it but to give in, and—

“I should go,” Dorian says, and his voice is rough, and he says it with his face pressed into the Bull’s shoulder.

The Bull says nothing. He’d said little the night before.  _ Dorian _ , and  _ sure _ , and that had been it. Something despondent in the curve of his back, and Dorian hadn’t thought to ask—no, that isn’t it. Had not wanted to ask, in the expectation of being rebuffed. And the Bull had held him all night, is holding him now, despite whatever it is that weighs on him.

Selfish, to have come; selfish yet, to linger. Selfish once more, to angle his face up to say, “Unless…”

“Go,” says the Bull, and something sharp stabs through Dorian’s chest even as the Bull continues, “or stay. It’s your call.”

It settles on Dorian like something heavy, and so he shifts from it. The air carries a chill through the unpatched hole in the roof, but the fire’s been banked and would require only half a thought to relight if the Bull would only allow him to summon a flame. On the Bull’s desk a candle stands, melted near to the quick.

If only the Bull were less inscrutable. But in this he and Dorian are similar again, the way they both keep their emotions covered by simpler feelings and exaggerations—and sometimes, yes, by showing nothing at all. But the Bull has always read Dorian far more accurately than Dorian has read him.

Stay, or go. Not such a difficult concept. There’s warmth here and some measure of comfort, and perhaps the opportunity to return the favour, but also certain implications that would only solidify those of the evening. Outside the air is even colder, and Dorian would lack any source of heat at all, but perhaps the Bull would prefer time alone to sort through his own thoughts without the burden of Dorian’s. Even remaining with the Inquisition has Dorian staying in far too many places he isn’t wanted.

Indecision isn’t exactly Dorian’s favourite excuse, but it will do in a pinch. He raises his head enough to see, in the pale light of the early morning, the tension in the Bull’s face that corresponds with the tension in the shoulder that Dorian has curled around. A bad night, and a tense morning.

“Did you sleep at all?” Dorian asks, rather than choosing to remain or depart. “I hope I didn’t keep you up.”

“Nah, you’re good,” the Bull replies, but it’s not the way he usually says it, mid-coitus and with that reverent tone—

No. Stick to the present. No reply means the Bull either didn’t sleep or didn’t get any rest from it. There had been something wrong, and Dorian had disregarded it, and now the Bull won’t even look at him. Most likely it’s nothing to do with Dorian at all. He should leave. He’s not making anything better by lingering.

He doesn’t go. Instead he pushes himself up on one elbow to watch the Bull’s face, and tells himself that he doesn’t care either way if the Bull bothers to meet his eyes.

I’ve imposed, Dorian wants to say, but this isn’t about him. He brings his right hand to rest on the Bull’s shoulder, not soft or in effort to comfort so much as making his attention known. “But something’s wrong.”

The Bull looks up, and throws him a tired smile, and now Dorian just wants to shout in frustration. He doesn’t. The Bull’s arm is warm, but his face must be cold, and Dorian would touch it to find out but this isn’t what they do. Not in the morning. Not when it lacks the context of sex.

The hand on Dorian’s back shifts as the Bull tightens his grip, briefly. “Just got a few things on my mind,” he says. “No big deal. You doing any better?”

The answer is no, but when Dorian shakes his head that’s not what he means. “You may be shocked to find,” he replies with a voice sharper than he’d intended, “that not everything is about me. You obliged me, but you could have spent the time better, I’m sure, taking care of yourself.”

This might have been the wrong thing to say. Ungrateful, at least, and who is he to judge the Bull for giving him what he asked for? When, for that matter, did he start wanting to take care of the Bull in the first place? The Bull’s face shutters and his arm slackens again, and Dorian looks away again. Weak winter sun filters through the window and the remaining unpatched holes in the roof. It pales all it touches: the floorboards that the Chargers laid back in the autumn, the pile of Dorian’s clothing on the floor, the Bull’s grey skin. His scars fade in the light. Dorian has to restrain the oddest urge to run his hands over the Bull’s arm and face and chest, just to make sure they’re still there.

He levers himself into a seated position, but keeps his free hand in his own lap. “Never mind,” he says quickly. “I’ve overstepped. I’ll let you be.”

The Bull shifts, the arm around Dorian falling away entirely. But out of the corner of his eye Dorian can see the Bull shaking his head. “You’re good,” he says once again, voice still rough and resonant with sleep. “I’m good. Besides, you’ve never let me be once since we met. It’d be uncharacteristic of you, starting now.”

The usual sputtering outrage would take far too much energy, and Dorian doesn’t much want it right now. “You’ve not especially left me alone, either.”

A pause, and then the Bull touches his shoulder. “Hey.” Dorian slowly returns his eyes to the Bull’s face, which has softened again. “I would have. If you’d asked.”

“I didn’t,” Dorian says, quietly. “And I’m not certain I would have let you alone, if  _ you’d  _ asked.”

The Bull shakes his head again. “Good thing I didn’t, either.”

_ Stay, or go _ , he had said. He’s never asked for anything, only offered. And almost always Dorian’s taken him for granted. When did Dorian start caring? He’d not noticed until now, such a ridiculous concept as it is, and he’s certainly never acted on it.

Well. No time like the present, one supposes.

“You don’t, really,” he says. “Ask, that is. Perhaps I’ll start. Something was amiss last night. Will you tell me about it?”

The moment between question and answer stretches out far longer than the time accounts for. Dorian hadn’t considered this either, that the Bull never asks because perhaps he simply doesn’t want anything from him. Perhaps Dorian is as inconsequential to him as Dorian had assumed the Bull was to  _ him _ . 

Then the Bull shifts and sits up, so they face each other head-on. “Not really a big deal,” he says, and then snorts at the eyebrow Dorian raises. “Qun stuff. Reports I can do, but when they write me back they usually want something because they’re gonna make some kind of move.”

Once Dorian had kept one eye on the Bull at all times, waiting for the Qunari knife in his Tevinter back, but time and familiarity wore that instinct down. The reminder of the Bull’s other identity kicks something out from somewhere in his stomach, not because Dorian is afraid of him--at least, not anymore--but because the Iron Bull, mercenary captain and incorrigible flirt, is also that Qunari spy. It lies between them like a knife.

“Not something terribly threatening to these unremarkable mortals here in the unspeakable southern extremities, I hope,” he says. “It would be such a shame to have to postpone our existing plans for impromptu visits of state. Our poor Ambassador.”

The Bull watches him with a serious eye, not even the slightest acknowledgement of Dorian’s levity. “Not that.” Around them the shadows have begun to creep toward the window, the sun rising higher into the day. Through the closed door wafts the smell of cooking breakfast links, and the Bull’s stomach growls. It might have been funny. “But if it was an invasion, what makes you think I’d tell you about it?”

And there it is. Dorian rises to his knees so he can lean closer, and tries hard not to think about poor balance and keen edges. The blankets pull away and the air drifts icy across his bare skin. Somehow this comes second to the defensive hunch in the Bull’s shoulders. Matters are perhaps worse than Dorian has suspected, if his priorities have shifted so completely.

When Dorian’s hand falls to his collarbone, muted brown against faded grey, putting their disparate bodies into sharp relief, the Bull looks to it. The momentary expression that crosses his face could, if one squinted hard enough, resemble surprise. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” Dorian says, his voice light. Comfort, he doesn’t really do, but distraction he can manage. “Though I’m scarcely in a position to write home about it. Imagine explaining that one to my father--actually, you know, that’s not a terrible idea.”

“Passing sensitive information his way?” The Bull’s eyebrows, scar tissue notwithstanding, rise. 

“Certainly not,” scoffs Dorian. “Telling him of my prolonged and willing association with a Ben-Hassrath spy, however… I suppose you can’t actually imagine his face, but believe me that it would be a thing of beauty.”

Progress, at last: the Bull cracks the distant cousin of a tired grin. “That does sound good,” he says, and then looks back down to Dorian’s hand.

The next words stick in his throat--these, of all, which Dorian has almost never felt the need to hesitate over. “Think of it, then, when I--”

The Bull’s grin widens just a hair. “When you…?”

“Oh, just come here,” Dorian says, though he pushes at the Bull’s shoulder while he says it, so he may be sending mixed messages here. But the Bull laughs, the goal here anyway, and tugs Dorian down with him.

Against Dorian’s lips, he speaks into their mingled breath. “You got a plan?” 

Dorian kisses him properly before replying. “Well,” he says, “I  _ have _ decided to stay. For the moment." A yawn, almost restrained, and then Dorian carefully cups the Bull's jaw. Gently, the way he hasn't been, and steady, the way he'd like to start. He thumbs the scar that spans from neck to cheekbone. "Allow me to help where I can."


End file.
